In Defense of Strawberries And Cream

What separates barbarism from civilization? About 96 hours without power, it turns out. The plight of a few New Yorkers left without food, fuel, or power — and increasingly without public services — has provided a cautionary tale into what happens when the infrastructure which supports 21st century megacities collapses. It shows what occurs when the design margin runs out. The signs in the disaster area abound. “Looters will be shot.” “Block proteced by Smith and Wesson.”

The woman added that she has been hearing gunshots likely fired in the nearby housing project for three nights in a row.

Meanwhile, local surfer Keone Singlehurst said that he stockpiled knives, a machete and a bow and arrow.

“I would take a looter with a bow if a felt threatened. I would definitely use it,” he said. “It’s like the wild west. A borderline lawless situation.”

The New York Times describes what life has become in public housing. The residents dread the coming of the shadows with the same intensity as the Eloi feared sundown. A-woo.

It would be dark soon at the Coney Island Houses, the fourth night without power, elevators and water. Another night of trips up and down pitch-black staircases, lighted by shaky flashlights and candles. Another night of retreating from the dark.

On the second floor of Building 4, an administrative assistant named Santiago, 43, who was sharing her apartment with five relatives, ran through a mental checklist. Turn the oven on for heat. Finish errands, like fetching water for the toilet, before the light fades.

Perhaps more so than in any other place in the city, the loss of power for people living in public housing projects forced a return to a primal existence. Opened fire hydrants became community wells. Sleep-and-wake cycles were timed to sunsets and sunrises. People huddled for warmth around lighted gas stoves as if they were roaring fires. Darkness became menacing, a thing to be feared.

In H.G. Well’s story the Eloi marvel at the instinctive ability of the Time Traveler to defend himself against the Morlocks. What was ordinary for a man of the 19th century had become unthinkable to the child-like inhabitants of that dismal future. The ability to resist had been bred out of them. Perhaps in time it will be bred out of the hapless denizens of public housing, waiting as they are for “someone” to restore order. It now no longer occurs to them that this “someone” was once them.

But where the memory of the human birthright had not been wholly extirpated, the residents looked to themselves. Gone in an instant was the idea that “guns” are bad. Unmentioned was the once sacrosanct principle that nothing is settled by force. Few things transform a surfer — like the man above — into a caveman faster than need.

117 Comments, 117 Threads

Absolutely true, Richard. I live in Brooklyn, around the corner from a gas station, and it’s close to pandemonium whenever a delivery of gas arrives. Within minutes word gets out and the line stretches for 3-4 city blocks. Every gas station with gas has a police presence because of all the altercations. A lot of people are behaving as if this is the last remaining gas on Earth.

Criminals dressing as power company employees, phones used as flashlights snatched; the city has really degenerated far more rapidly than I’ve thought. There is very little “coming together” within communities, and forget about across communities (at a meaningful level)

Even thought 0bama and Campaign team have pretty much forgotten about those that are without in NYC right now and will only worry about them Tuesday, Not like the MSM is really going to go after 0bama like they did Bush who certainly managed Katrina better, even if there is blow back they will push it down onto the lower levels. Just imagine if we suffered a EMP! this is heaven compared to what that would bring on a national scale.

Today I went to a Museum of Electricity, with an absolutely marvelous collection of electrical apparatus dating from the discovery of static electricity. The work , the inventiveness and scientific exploration that went into discovering and providing all the benefits we enjoy today,was astounding. How we take for granted that “design margin” that took so much effort to create. Not incidentally, it all seemed to spring from a Western European cultural tradition.

It’s the little things that keep us going, isn’t it? A quick text from Mom. Milk for our Cheerios. A statement over the radio from the authorities that yes, it will be a few days before the power comes on but they’re working on it–and the luxury of belief that they’re telling the truth.

I’ll try to look at the bright side. If we survive the current crisis, perhaps it will have a salutory effect on the body politic that once in our lives, we all had to wonder if there would ever be strawberries again.

Bloomberg has imploded in credibility. Like many a petty tyrant he overreached and is stunned by how rapidly his power has diminished. The vehicle for his rejection was the marathon. He wanted it and micromanaged it in the same pettifogging manner that he has approached every element of government. No one can accuse Mike Bloomberg of being a lazy guy interested only in making empty big picture speeches. He is not an Obama but more nearly a desexed Clinton or a more competent Carter. The rebellion in the City Council fueled by the tabloids took him and the NY Times by surprise.

Full disclosure, I supported Bloomberg in the last election and arguably dragged him over the finish line by knocking on 1,100 doors when his incompetent campaign was throwing money at deadbeats from Craig’s List and doing GOTV (Get Out The Vote) that contacted as many of the opposition as his supporters. My defense was and is that the other guy was worse. Thompson would have been the fast path to the Chicago Way or Detroit race based crony looting.

Personally I regret the loss of the marathon. It will take the city years to recover from the loss of image. I blame Bloomberg because he failed to sell the race as good for the city at this time of suffering. A politician should be politic. The job is not to pick up the trash or wire the lights at a marathon tent but to get people to support projects, whether trash collection or public events, that serve the community interest. It is a sales job, as most CEO jobs are. The Chief Sales Executive should be technically competent at managing services and people, and Obama is not, but they should not get lost in the weeds and forget their customers. Mark Steyn has pointed out that even Bloomberg’s claims of administrative expertise bleed thin because of his focus on small bore issues that alienate people and make him look like a hectoring bully people are eager to see taken down.

Things will turn really interesting right after the election. Weather forecast for NYC for Wednesday and Thursday is cold (nights down into the 30s, daytime in the 40s) and rainy. Watch tempers really flare when folks are cold, wet. in the dark and hungry.

Back in the Rodney King riot days in So Cal the one thing that stands out in my mind is that when the National Guard motorized patrols moved through the streets down where I was they were cheered. Nothing like a little mayhem and murder to make everyone appreciate the warriors. Quite sure that same thing would happen now in New York if military units were patroling the streets. If Obama wasn’t such a half-wit he would have coordinated things with the Democratic Governor of New York and got the request for federal military assistance and he would have moved military support units into areas like Staten Island and have MPs patroling the streets. But then that would require him to make a decision.

New Yorkers aren’t famed for their patience and courtesy. They also haven’t been through this much in the recent past so they don’t know that they’re just going to have to wait until things get repaired. One of the power companies in Florida sent 500 linemen and 300 trucks. The small local utility sent 32 trucks with crew. There are probably traffic jams all up I-95 due to relief efforts being sent north.

Churches throughout the south are collecting food and supplies and sending them up as fast as they can, and others are collecting volunteers to go help out.

As for looters, if they had more weapons, there would be far fewer looters.

Watch tempers really flare when folks are cold, wet. in the dark and hungry.

Cold, wet, dark and hungry is how most people lived not so very long ago, before they were afflicted by all the things that it is fashionable to hate.

“Do you remember the taste of Spam, Mr. Frodo? And how it was to scoop up a fragment of jalapeno from the salsa with a nacho?”

“No Sam, I can’t remember Salsa. Nor how was it was to take the fact that the remote would work when you pointed it at the TV. I am cold and naked in the dark.”

“People ask themselves, how can the world go back to what it was. After all these power outages and gasoline lines. But that’s how it was for the people in the old books. Full of darkness and power outages they were! But a new line will be put in. And the lights will shine all the clearer!”

“Mr Frodo. You forgot we’re not allowed to buy bulbs any more.”

“C’mon Sam. I may not be able to carry the Ring any more. But maybe we can make it to Cash n’ Carry a couple of miles this way. They may have some Twizzlers. Do you remember the taste of Twizzlers, Ho-hos or Hostess Twinkie pies?”

And how ironic it is that they who are least appreciative of that which provides their security and prosperity are the ones who wail the loudest when they are taken away. The great god Murphy hates optimists, the smug, and Utopians. Ultimately they will all stand before his court, and Murphy is not a merciful god at all. No. Not at all.

Folks in my neighborhood hung out their windows and CHEERED when the power came on last night. Man, that was a long slog. The 2003 blackout, we were out for 27 hours and thought That was bad.

Walking through the lower east side Thursday after dark, I was struck by how shabby and worn the city looks without her lights. Like a city of abandoned buildings, inhabited by ghostly squatters. And by how Dim candlelight is: 1765 was a very dark time indeed.

Bloomberg, in his infinite wisdom, decreed that the buses, the sole form of public transit in the Dead Zone, would NOT continue to run after sunset. So the buses full of passengers have been ordered to stop at 34th Street and ditch all their passengers: old, crippled, burdened with provisions, no matter! OUT, all of you! the Mayor doesn’t want the MTA to get sued if a bus runs into a passenger in the dark streets!

Thus he puts this absurd fear above the lifeblood of the city — the transit system. Of course, the fact that we all run a much greater chance of getting hit by the CARS if we’re walking miles in the dark concerns him not at all. When one intrepid reporter asked him WTF we were supposed to do, he snapped, “You shouldn’t be out after dark anyway.”

34th Street is the southern terminus of the bus lines after dusk. From there to the tip of Manhattan Island is several miles.

We also heard rumors of armed gangs starting to saddle up and terrorize residents outside their neighborhoods — i.e., they were starting to Target Whitey.

Apart from a couple of friends who live nearby, I didn’t see a soul or anyone doing any relief efforts, nor did I see everyone “coming together.” NYers were doing their usual solitary cat routine. No community get togethers or block parties, no anything, really. Of course, in my neighborhood, it was just the blackout we had to worry about. People were good about standing in line at the local “Moonie market,” God bless them for staying open and not price-gouging! They had candles in the aisles, but would only let 5 at a time inside, and shepherd us around with their flashlights. It would have been REALLY grim without them: they were the ONLY source of food in Little Italy, apart from Ray’s Pizza, which did, God bless them also, stay open throughout. All else was boarded up.

The buildings really looked like abandoned squats without the lights and power. Spooky and vaguely apocalyptic.

One more thing! Mayor Bubblewrap got hollered at and cursed in the Rockaways today! (see NY1 News). It was hilarious: he literally hid behind his female press flak! Tried to escape the large, angry black folks who were cussin’ him out.

prepin is virtually made fun of and given a bad rap by the powers that be and the shows on tv that follow some real oddballs. but something ive commented on before is that 40 years ago it was not odd to keep a large garden and can, bottle annd wax vegetables for lean times in the winter. it wasnt odd to keep a large pantry of dry goods, and it wasnt odd to hunt. it wasnt odd to have some self sufficiency.

the point is its clear and evident from a storm like this that being prepared isnt crazy. and a breakdown in society isnt just the fevered imaginings of oddballs on cable prepper shows.

Where is Obama?
All the soaring rhetoric about how he would be with the Sandy disaster
victims every step of the way.This is worse than Katrina and has a poor
set of leaders again (Obama/Bloomberg)bring back Rudy!!!!!!!!!!

If you live in NYC or Suffolk county and use your weapon to defend yourself or your family from robbery, rap, murder be aware that Bloomie will prosecute you to the full extent of the NYS and NYC laws. Then prepare for a lawsuit from the family of the criminal.

When you elect leaders who think the primary goal of government is protecting you from trans-fats and over consumption of soda what in the hell do you think you are going to get? Guess what all you enlightened people in New York City, you got what you voted for: Pompous drooling morons at the wheel. Deal with it.

What a big crock. New Orleans gets Katrina and the natives go wild. They all move to luxury suites in Radissons scattered around the South then proceed to tear the place up. New Yankers get a little blow, cant buy any blow, and tear the place up. Houston gets Rita, power is out for a week or more, we all work together, help our neighbors out then go back to doin’ what we were doin’. We are still paying our good hard earned dollars for those poor little Katrina VICTIMS who still can’t manage to afford a half million dollar house with their government payola in the most job lucrative city in the nation and now we’ll get the Yankers looking to one up their Nawlins brethren.

Why is there no leadership in the neighborhoods? A leader needs to be able to defend those he is leading. #18 Buffalobob has it right. To defend yourself is to bring the power of the state down on you later after things return to normalcy. Napoleon Bloomberg does not even want the mean old national guard with their icky guns to help restore normalcy. Imagine if one of the peasants used a gun?

Why are there no supplies? NY supposedly have all this moxie and enterpreneurial spirit. People are hungry? Where is the roach coach and the pushcart vendor? They could clean up. People need clothing and jackets? Where is that guy with the trunk full of stuff? People need gas? Where is the guy with the tank in the back of the pickup? Oh, that would be price gouging! Where is his business license? Obviously they are profiteering evil people. Government will protect the people from these evils!

And the government supplied water that ran out Saturday will resume next week and be delivered Monday or Tuesday or ???; after the contract is signed and the low bidder can deliver what is contracted to the central warehouse for distribution by the government aid workers. Even if the low bidder is in California and there will be a slight delay in delivery due to shipping it by truck 3,000 miles.

And so, they all sit freezing in the dark behind their locked doors and pray no one busts the door down and steals what little they have left. But, eventually government will extend its domain back to the sheep it has abandoned. And in the meantime most of the sheep will survive the wolves. The government will be happy, and will tell the sheep how well they were cared for by their benevolent government. After all, they will soon be able to shear the sheep again after they are fattened on the federal government aid.

“The ability to resist had been bred out of them. Perhaps in time it will be bred out of the hapless denizens of public housing, waiting as they are for “someone” to restore order.”

Several months ago I read David McCullough’s book on the Johnstown flood in the late 19th century. As soon as the waters receded, the suviving citizens immediately organized themselves into committees responsible for food, shelter, fuel, search & rescue, burial detail, police, medical staff, communications, etc. They identified what they needed to do immediately for survival until the outside world could get to them with relief, and then, by damn, they did it. Roads were out, the railroad was compromised, communications were local and not beyond “ground zero.” Not surprisingly, reporters were the first outsiders to arrive and they didn’t show up for a couple of days. The stories the reporters managed to get out galvanized the nation and indeed the world to flood the zone with aid. But for the days until that aid arrived, the survivors of the flood were active and responsible for their own well-being. They didn’t sit around whining for people to come rescue them, feed them, comfort them, shelter them. They did for themselves.

It appears that on the whole, Americans, whether in public housing or manicured suburbs, have lost the capacity to help themselves when the disaster strikes. That’s what the nanny state breeds out of those within its deadening, honeyed embrace. I’m not talking about survivalists type self-reliance. I’m talking about the just ordinary civic society self-reliance, the kind of thing that characterized Americans’ responses to natural disasters.

I remember a conversation with the principal of my son’s school many years ago.
As someone who grew up bullied, I made sure to instill in my son the self respect that insures one will stand up for himself in situations of isolation.
I also made quite clear that for him to instigate altercations was intolerable as far as I was concerned. I did not want him bullied, but NO WAY was I going to condone him being a bully.
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Well, three boys tested him when he was in the Second Grade.
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I was called in to ‘discuss’ the situation with the principal. (Discuss means “Be Lectured to By” in the School Codebook.)
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Apparently, there was no dispute over who threw the first punch. One of the three boys he had beaten clearly threw the first punch and all the witnesses agreed.
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“So, why am I here,” I asked the principal.
“Because your son was fighting,” he answered.
“I can see that, but you’ve established that he didn’t throw the first punch, so why am I here?”
“Mr. D—-, Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right.” He siad.
“And there is the Rub,” I said, “I Reject Wholley and Totally your Asanine Premise that Self Defense is Wrong. As far as I’m concerned it is not only Right, it is A Right! And I’m not going to let some pinhead who happens to be the biggest fish in a small pond teach my son eslewise!”
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They are trying to teach children to be nice compliant little drones so they’ll be just like the Eloi.
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An incident where he came to the aid of his sister being choked by one of those three boys led to us Homeschooling.

The more I read, the more grateful I am to live in a rural western community. A REAL community in the old fashioned sense of the word. Almost everyone around me has ample food storage, a water well (many with hand pumps), generators and stabilized fuel, and firewood. Lots and lots of firewood. And unlike some western states, we are still legally able to burn it here. Not that some silly green law would stop us if the power went out and the weather got cold. A few other things most if not all of have here- An abiding faith in God, a commitment to the well being of the community, and plenty of weapons and ammunition. Plus the skill and determination to use them to feed and/or defend ourselves and our families. We sit here and shake our heads at our eastern brethren, even as we pray for them. They ridicule us for our culture and our lifestyle, but I wonder how many of them would like to join us tonight- warm, well fed, secure, and not expecting to or waiting on any government entity to rescue us.

This is good to be prepared for emergency to keep your only true love warm and happy and cheerful and soft and kind and caring with sweet tender kisses by candle light . I bring chainsaw to the great city. She hear this in the distance in my hands this makes her feel comfort and she know when I come home that night she has the arts of casting out my monster demon
Sleeping with chainsaw in bedroom during emergency is wise as well i believe in case tree falls on house and you need to cut the heads off a few night demons without wasting time so you can get back to your all night warm sleep rich romance free from stress , I believe
(With the arrival of the Queen of Sheba the 11th heaven has come to the earth and and I show her the first heaven and purgatory and the great thrones in hell at my seaside paradise- now Wise King Solomon is coming next week I believe so shall we see what this mrans.)

It is going just as I expected. Progressive have disarmed themselves and in times like these they are defenseless.

This is just sample of what is coming in a few year when the money stops flowing to all the entitled. Then it will be in ever major city and the entitled will loot and rob all the defenseless Progressives of their food.

For those of us in the happy situation you describe it is high time to get prepared to rebuild civilization once the present post-war Liberal Order collapses. It is not a question of “if” but “when” and the clock is ticking fast.

NY Times link:
Did I miss something? Why is an employed bus driver, making minimally $41K a year living in public housing?
“Three floors up, Carmen Jimenez, 48, cowered in the descending darkness. She had not left her apartment since the storm arrived and depended on her neighbor, Jacqueline Fuentes, 47, for food and water. [Ms. Fuentes, a bus driver for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority], had also lighted candles in the hallway, so her neighbors could see.”

I used to have a hard time understanding the movies in the late fifties, early sixties about a handful of punks terrorizing a subway car full of people, or an apartment building or elevator. When did the notion gain credence that you are supposed to give in to evil? Who first claimed that it was ‘enlightened’ to allow the dreggs of society to run riot through a hard won, tediously built community?
How could the ‘Greatest Generation’ spend an ocean of blood setting the world aright then passively allow their children to be taught that every lesson they have learned at such great cost was wrong?
I’m waiting for the last New Yorker who KNOWS to stand up and tell him neighbors;
“We have believed a LIE. You cannot crawl back into the womb. A man who cannot defend his own family, cannot feed them or shelter them is to be despised, not admired, certainly not put in a position of leadership. If we place the safety of our selves and our loved ones in ANYONE ELSES hands we have become their slaves.”

Not to be heartless, because the storm damage in NYC and northern New Jersey is really a tragedy, but looking at the what is going to happen on Tuesday, could New York or New Jersey be in play? With basic necessities out, are the deep blue locals gonna really turn out to vote? Obama leads according to RCP by 25-30% in NY but only 12% in New Jersey according to Huff Post.

NYC is an anachronism. It is just too dense. If there was going to be a place where the social order was going to crumble , it would be NYC. Only by the grace of the massive thievery on Wall Street and the resultant hundreds of billions of dollars poured in the local economy as a result, has the city been able to maintain its extravagant, arrogant ways.

NYC’s hyper blue model environment has pushed out the stabilizing influences of middle class families long ago. So they are now left with a demographic that is the least likely to pull together in a time of tragedy.

You stopped counting too soon. Since Rita we’ve had Ike nearly knock our socks off and destroy patches of the Gulf Coast, and Galveston is still humming along nicely, even with our Katrina bred new neighbors.

Reading Lord of the Flies in the 7th grade brought me to an understanding of “the thin veneer of civilization”.

A phrase that has never left me.

Yes, self-reliance (see RW Emerson’s essay) has been bred out of whole generations of Americans.

Mikey Bloomberg is the type of guy who would go ballistic if his own personal creature comforts were disrupted, typical of the hypocrisy of individuals who like throwing about their weight in the spirit of “never waste a good crisis” but throw hissy fits when their own comfort zone is compromised.

great comments – here in midwest we went without power for 9 days (“inland Hurricane”) – generator ran like a sewing machine, had portable Ham Radio antennas up just hours after storm cleared, work was cancelled…might as well go down to my basement shop and reload some more .223 ammo…

When it happens it will happen fast. The implosion is inevitable. Never in history has any society lost so much wealth in so short a time and survived. The trillions in wait pending the removal of obama from office are not enough to change the landscape of the economy. 39.8 Trillion is lost. And when you look at the root cause of each sector of the economy that lost value, you will find a government policy that was at the root of the problem.

And the perps responsible who waged this war on every institution in the USA?

Well they now reside in the comfy confines of DC as senior economic advisors to one BHO.

28 Laurie J “Did I miss something? Why is an employed bus driver, making minimally $41K a year living in public housing?”

Public Housing in NYC has a different history than elsewhere. One big difference is the intentional mixing of people/families with jobs, the elderly, the disabled, but a mix of people, based on income, and, due to the always-present housing shortage since the 1990′s, years-long waiting lists.

Despite the Sandy-devastation in the New York metro area, and the reality that such a storm surge was only a matter of when, and Mayor Marathon certainly could have focussed on storm barriers instead of trans-fats, most New Yorkers, especially outside of Manhattan, behave just like other Americans, and help each other.

And, most of us are NOT liberals. Maybe that explains the 50% voter participation. The peculiarities of an entrenched Democratic machine means you can have a State Senator, Democrat, who is also an Evangelical minister to the right of Santorum on social issues.

Hopefully the rebuilding will finally take into consideration that a 21st century city built on a web of islands in an estuary should not still have all subway lines routed through lower Manhattan just because that is where NYC started.

You say everything will be back to normal in NY in a couple of weeks, you could not be more wrong. There are whole communities that were devastated and will take months or years to regain normalcy. All of NY is not NYC and all of NYC is not Manhattan.

I live on a barrier island off the coast of Texas. Hurricanes are not an uncommon occurrance and are in fact milestones used when discussing local history. Such as “I went through Carla”, or “we were here for Alicia” or the new benchmark of Hurricane Ike.

Ike was the great unknown hurricane of 2008. While the nation was pre-occupied with the Presidential election coming on the heels of the financial meltdown, there was little coverage of Ike other than that of a passing weather event. For the people of Galveston who had evacuated to other locales, the news coverage of the Hurricane was shockingly poor. The local stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area stopped reporting on the Hurricane as soon as the last traces of the storm left their radar coverage area.

In the weeks and months that followed the storm, the people of Galveston started reconstruction. Volunteer groups were recruited and made the trip to help people clean-up and rebuild. The National Guard and the Red Cross did an excellent job of getting food and much needed water to the community. As always, Wal-Mart, Target and Kroger were outstanding in their ability to re-open and re-provision the community.

As a result of Ike, many marginal homes and buildings that were not destroyed by nature were demolished by man. Some were saved and re-built.

The rebuilding process was as stressful as the damage cause by the storm. The permitting process to get a building permit was a nightmare. While it was soon streamlined, the time required for a contractor to wait in line consumed a large amount of valuable time which led to people being hired by contractors to sit and wait in line.

With the rebuilding came Federal money and control. FEMA housing was trucked in and placed at the airport and other available property. Few of the units were occupied and were removed within a year.

Many of the private homes that were to be rebuilt with Federal money are still incomplete if they have been started.

The people of New York and going to discover that their nightmare is not over, in many ways it has just begun. Federal rules, State rules, local rules will be conflicting. Projects with unrealistic timetables will be started, then halted before being canceled before being re-bid to a new contractor. Five years from now, there will still be projects waiting for one more review and approval.

The people of New York will discover that the purpose of government is not to make things easier, quicker, or cheaper. The purpose of government is to be obeyed.

My goodness. Cheer up guys and girls. It’s not that bad. Communities are already organizing themselves. Donated aid (food, clothing, money) are already arriving. Power is being restored. What we have seen is shell-shocked fear. Yes, there are thugs who take advantage of the chaos but largely, the anecdotes we hear and read about are stories from the weak and the vulnerable, mostly about boogiemen and things that go bump in the night.

My heart goes out to the stricken communities who are already themselves picking up the shattered pieces.

The lesson to be relearned here is that in the US, we find support and security in our families, our neighbors, our churches, our communities, the state and finally in the feds.

Not to make the suffering in NYC and surrounds seem small, but I send care packages to the troops in Afghanistan. Some to individuals and some to a Chaplin. The requested items will break your heart and keep you awake in your warm soft bed. Our government cares not. I fully expect to one day receive an urgent request for not socks or blankets but bullets.

When Hurricane Hugo hit SC I went there to help my Mom and we were without power for a week. No rioting, no fear, just tired annoyance.

When Hurricane Francis hit here in Florida in 2004 I had no power for 10 days. Working all day in the heat was not that bad but I could not sleep at night since my generator would not run my air cond. After a couple days I had to return to my brother’s house in GA. But no rioting or Lord of The Flies stuff.

In neither case did I look for relief efforts, no FEMA, no nobody. I just wanted to see a damnpower company truck.

I recall that when they had that power failure in NYC in the mid-70′s the mayor demanded answers as to why their people had to spend a night in fear. He wanted answers from ConEd. I thought that the real answers were needed from the people who turn into Moorlocks when the lights go out.

Maybe in all the places that vote for Obama they should shut the power off for a week every year and remind them of the Dems policies and how they relate to that condition becoming more permanent.

There are no atheists in foxholes. There are no Democrats sitting around a candle at night wishing they had not run out of Slim Jim snacks so soon.

I will say that times of crisis like these could be teaching moments for our enlightened, more feminized society to relearn the value and role of men…and women, working together.

One last point on the soapbox.

We are entirely too dependent on a short supply chain. When grocery store shelves get wiped out, people get hungry in a hurry. The current television series Revolution, paints a grim story of what might happen if suddenly, all the lights go out and stay out.

I went through Frederick back in 79. 6 weeks without electric was hard, but it was the 3 weeks without running water that was really bad.
We didn’t wait for anyone, we got up the next day with chainsaws and cleared the
roads ourselves.
We rigged bikes to manually pump gas and water. We took care of our neighbors and ourselves best we could.
Never saw any looting or even heard of any.

Adversity. We toil endlessly to overcome it, but cannot thrive without. Hunger hurries us to eat. Cold compels us to clothe and and in storms, to seek shelter. Peril purposes us to defend. Evil evinces the need to prepare.

However, if adversity is removed, humanity will perish. Provide food, shelter, health care to all in need, and they will cease to contend with adversity, and become jellyfish moving with the prevailing tide, neither planning nor preparing for ill consequences.

It is foolishness to provide necessities of life, freely, to all who are in need. Even the immune system will wither if not ceaselessly challenged.

It’s quite easy to live all of our lives within a framework or system and utterly fail to perceive the concepts upon which the framework functions. Years ago, we stopped wearing weapons, carrying sidearms, toting rifles because the town was now secured by the sheriff, and was free of dangerous beasts. This current case illustrates that the grand bargain can default. Then all bets are off.

The underpinnings of progressive thought are seen false and inadequate by such relatively minor upsets as severe storms. Yet many will not perceive the importance of rejection of incompetent constructs.

If we are surprised by these developments, then we lack understanding of truth.

This article is elegant and true, as usual, but let’s remember the edge comes from more than the rose. Those bumper stickers promoting Better Living Through Superior Firepower are also correct.

Pollyanna is now SOL, sweetness and light now often synonyms for denial and cowardice. The parasite class will be culled one way or another, and not very far in the future. A bloodbath can be avoided only with great difficulty, since it involves extirpating people who won’t leave voluntarily (found in elites everywhere), backed by tens of millions of drones with a profound sense of entitlement (found not just in metropolitan housing projects but throughout the land and at every level of government).

A peaceful solution is against the odds, even though the outcome is certain. Three more things that are certain: pious bromides about community and togetherness are an invitation to the steamroller to wipe you out; the bad guys don’t do well in daylight; and the drones can be reprogrammed or suppressed without much difficulty

Very few Americans anywhere are thinking this through. Yes, there are too many variables to do it with precision — it was ever so and always will be — but the starting point is this: If you delay, it’s only going to get worse.

So… best to cross the Rubicon in force and let the chips fall. It sure beats cowering in the woods until the end of your days, mouthing platitudes and feeling smug.

Romney is at best a small boy with a small voice, a weak finger in a massive dike. But for right now, he has to do — though not for long.

I hate to comment because I really do sympathize and hope everybody has power restored fast. But you people have no idea how often, as a Floridian, New Yorkers ridicule our quaint habit of living prepared. Why stock up? In New York you can shop when you need something. Never mind my other hints such as keeping gallon jugs of water in the freezer. Reading this post, I feel we truly do live in two different worlds.

Gotta tell you, those of you who objected to having non-union labor fix your power lines, much of the rest of the country thinks it’d be OK for you to spend some more time in the dark thinking about how much that distinction really means to you.. That being said, I wish power and safety for all.

In response to Corlyss at #22, who quoted from the article: “The ability to resist had been bred out of them. Perhaps in time it will be bred out of the hapless denizens of public housing, waiting as they are for ‘someone’ to restore order.”

Who’s “someone”? This reminds me of one of my public housing students, X, whose mother (BIG and discourteous) never seemed to have a clue about anything—and her son was heading that way.

He’d leave his jacket—a high-end gift from a Christian charity—in the yard at school. His mother would write (in his homework book, which, more often than not, remained at home, minus homework), “Isn’t there SOMEONE who can make sure that X brings his jacket home?” When she failed to sign and return important documents, she’d write, “NO ONE told me.” (I paginated the homework book just for her and highlighted where she’d been informed.) WHAT an entitled, irresponsible loser!

I actually quite liked X and had some success with him. One day, we had a little chat: “You know, X, you seem to have two very interesting people in your life: their names are “Someone and No One. Do you know what their real names are?” No, he didn’t. “Actually, X, their real names are X. YOU’RE Someone and No One, and it’s YOUR responsibility to do what your mom thinks Someone and No One should do.” My student seemed to get it. Then he went to another school. Somehow, I think that Someone and No One probably still play a pretty big role in this person’s life.

Dependency on Big Daddy Government, which all progressives, including feminists—what hypocrites they all are!—is deadly for the mind and spirit.

The volunteers from all walks of life ~ week prior was truly inspirational to read, see.

My being from the higher elevation of Colorado it was EXPECTED even as teenagers for our cars to have cold weather clothing and boots, blankets/ sleeping bags, kitty litter and shovel for the inevitable stuck vehicle, non-perishable food and water and road flares at a minimum.

This being the 90′s I hand a CB and handheld CB in my trunk. With spare batteries.. hahaha!

To see residents groveling to Chuck Schumer.. SCHUMER of all people. Wow.. here’s your sign.

…..”A liberal will bay for blood once radioactive glass fragments from his window are embedded in his face. People only want to buy the world a Coke when they feel safe. The idea of apologizing to radical Islamists for historical sins can only occur to people contemplating it over nachos and iced tea on a pleasant autumn afternoon. Deprive the same man of food, leave him confronted with the ruins of his home and the bodies of his family — and you may well marvel at the transformation.”

Some great comments here. But, to those who related their experiences of weathering hurricanes and the trials of rebuilding; what is the point of rebuilding a community that is constantly in the path of hurricanes?
The defination of insanity comes to mind, but there has to be more to this because I read intelligent comments from all of you.

As has been observed here by myself and others, many in the Fructosphere (left) are unable to separate their political affiliation from their sense of moral self: They merge with and become an appendage of their party for as long as it works for them – “Works for them” being relative as this virtual union increasingly provides diminishing returns for constituents even as it does for everyone else.

For them:

Progressive-Environmentalist-Democrat-Ten thousand commandments-License to ill-We are the ones we’ve been waiting for-From each according to his ability, to each according to her need-Equality in poverty…Good.

The left has been very good at compressing its political rhetoric for consumption while obscuring the record of its ‘achievements’, and many continue to be drawn into decaying orbits around its event horizon.

Among the only things capable of fundamentally changing such a person who has allowed themselves to become morally and fiscally dependent -swimming in a bowl full of like-minded fish where the temperature, and the food, and their waste is officially regulated for them and otherwise taken care of by mysterious Others- is when some undeniable external event (often enough catastrophic) disrupts their theoretical framework…Flood waters short out the wiring, lights go out, marauding bandits roam about, and personal economy sinks into a murky feverswamp of uncertainty. Then, securing the existential well-being of one’s family regains its importance in the hierarchy of people one must literally face. A community. 0bama and his minions attempted to be the change agents of something similar on an impersonal/irresponsible national scale in their moral equivalent of war on reality but I think they are discovering that things in the real world don’t often proceed as micromanaged from/in the fishbowl. Who knows? Some may even come to realize that the fishbowl is actually a toilet bowl.

Anyway, a great storm twenty-some-odd years ago [mostly] woke me up from my reverie and I suspect that a significant many in the effected areas have -amidst the gut check of suffering- been given the opportunity to rub the last of the sleep from their eyes as well…And it didn’t even require a czar.

All the best to them.
Get to work.
It does get better more rapidly than you’d think.
Then remember.

A liberal may bay for blood when the glass hits his face, but that won’t last long. Just look at how quickly after 9/11 and the earlier attacks the liberals reverted to hugging the terrorists and trying to find the “root cause” of the their anger and how we much we could surrender to make them like us.

That’s not to say I don’t think they can’t go feral. Indeed they would be amongst the most feral out there. Why? Because their entire world view is based on ego and emotions. Even seen an emotionally dominated person get frustrated? It isn’t pretty. Now image their whole cuddly world view is completely gone and they think they are entitled to your stuff? It will be zombie movies come true.

Consider New York City without power for five years. This is quite possible with Obama’s energy policies. Consider Sandy hitting thousands of wind mills, or thousands of acres of solar cells, his idea of the back bone of the grid. Scores of coal fired power plants were hit; dozens of nukes quietly shut down for safety reasons then roared back with juice after the storm.

I engineered a score of nukes and two score of fossil plants, forty years of engineering. I am voting against this, and Obama. He is wrong and dangerous.

too bad ‘friends’ is no longer an ongoing entity. just think of those episodes:

joey: hey guys, come out come out. i have good news.
chandler: you sure the coast is clear?
joey: yeah, the bad guys just heard about some clean water around the corner and a block over.
rachael: what is the good news?
joey: i caught a rat. (holding it up)
monica: i’m not eating that filthy thing. we have no water. how are we going to wash it?
phoebie: ow, ow, i have an idea. let’s use part of it as bait and try to catch us a big dog.
ross: we’re not going to eat the cute parts are we?

odd how a little more reality can cause a lot of quick changes in expectations, eh?

When I was 8-10 years old, my family summered for 3 weeks in Deal and Asbury Park, now in shambles. We had a small two B/R apt. on the second floor, two blocks from the beach. For additional amusement, coupla times per a summer we’d go up to Atlantic City and its boardwalk, saltwater taffy, bumper cars and the Steel Pier. We’d watch a horse “dive” blindfolded forty feet into the water.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

Republicans and independents breaking towards Romney, the MSM pushes hard on Obama and all but police the Republicans out of any question of foreign affairs. The government itself has proven that there is no lie too great or statistic too unbelievable that they should stay their hand against overt propaganda and lies to hold onto their own power. I hardly doubt that the US government is in league with the enemies of the US from Russia, China, Iran to steal this election with the good help of 10 million armed and violent illegal alien criminals to act as shock troops. God know the usurpers have got the vote from all enemy factions. It should prove little difficulty to pen the grand bargain but even Al Qaeda would be reticent to treaty with self-hating camp trustees.

The US government is a racist hate based organization that is out to kill old people, molest children and murder babies while upholding the public employee elites. It has no legitimate purpose other than the might it throws around so haphazardly. The whole edifice is rotten to the bone by the design of the Left who have swallowed the poison pill approach, all or nuttin’ communist theology. The fact that this election could be so close after such abject failure shows that American’s have already lost their country. The pussies stole it fair and square by threatening to call them names. And should Romney pull one off it will be abdicated by the labor unions that brought us Harry Reid. The common theme is and always will be that the elite bargain over who gets what but never over whether the common American gets to sit at the table.

Bloomberg passionately wants to stop people from drinking sodypop and at the same time he passionately wants to organize a foot race through the ruins of a hurricane? I passed through New York one day in 1966 and it did not look good. Mr Bloomberg’s weirdness is an example that suggests why I never bothered to go back for a second visit.

But the damage looks really bad and those people in the middle of it are truly in dire straits. Looking at pictures and reports of the damage from the hurricane brings back memories of reports about the damage in Japan after the tsunami. I don’t remember reports of New York type behaviour from Japan amid their tsunami disaster.

Jesus wept! 2010 we had a winter storm here in the south and lost power for a week in my neighborhood. No riots, no robbery, and no rape. worst event was when the teenager down the street kept drifting his l’il Toyota car up and down the icy street before he crashed. A neighbor pulled him out with his tractor. No injury. We have a well so no water, we have camping supplies so we had propane lights and stove as well as a heater. Entertainment was watching the birds and squirrels fight over the seed in the feeders and an old radio that could pick up TV programs which we listened too at night. Star Trek is oh so enlightening when there is no picture!
But in Blue state, liberal, democrat voting, and gun controlling NYC loses power for 96 hours it’s Gotterdammerung.
And the President is calling for a revenge vote.

I can understand why New Yorkers are upset and Bloomberg is endorsing Obama.

I have been listening to NPR on this and it is pretty clear that Republicans and Big Gulp swilling 250 Hemi driving yahoos from some place called Ohio are responsible for this mess in the first place.

Sure they mentioned that the scientists did not actually “say” that the hurricaine was related to global warming but went on with the report that it is because, well, obvious right?

Now the president (after some extended bro-hugs with Chris Christie, who is obviously switching over and will soon ban trans-fats because he really needs to) has to fly back there to convince the Ohioans to do the right thing and quit destroying the planet and hopefully do something about their waistlines at the same time which is just gross. The next hurricaine might just hit Cincinnati and that will change their tune pretty quick.

s @ 76: But the damage looks really bad and those people in the middle of it are truly in dire straits.

Actually, the surge was almost exactly as predicted 48 to 72 hours earlier, even a week earlier than that as Sandy formed and the long-term projections were made. And I don’t doubt that in some dusty drawer there are analysis fifty years old and more, maybe 100, forecasting exactly what finally happened. (“Can I get stucco?” asks Margaret Dumont of Groucho Marx, buying a beachfront home in Coconut Manor. “Oh, how you can get stucco!” answers Groucho, Warner Bros 1929)

Y’know, anytime I go to the beach, I wonder at those who live within a couple of feet above high tide, it has always seemed remarkable to me that statistical outliers don’t wash away beach clubs and the entire Malibu Colony at least every ten years or so. But at least those who live in such places would just shrug if it did happen, and odds are they’d be at one of their other seven houses anyway, what with threatening weather and all.

There’s even a short stretch of PCH down in Huntington Beach (Sunset Beach) here in California that floods once or twice a year, even in fine weather, when the astronomical high tides are maximum. And a stretch of beachfront houses there that every year or two get a few inches of salt water. The day will come when that whole section washes out, but so far it never has. But I hope there isn’t a lot of crying when it finally happens.

–

btw, fwiw, fyi, ymmv, I found the ABC Stephanopouloozafest unwatchable today, starting with David Plouffe is never an auspicious beginning, but they had their old-line panel on, and the lying and partisan posturing was just overwhelming, pro-Obama of course. A quick flip over to Meet the Depressed was no better, laughing and smirking and prevaricating endlessly. This is just NOT what politics looked like 20 or 40 years ago, it isn’t it isn’t it isn’t.

To those who saw ”Charlie Wilson’s War”, the movie with Tom Hanks (kindly indulge me):

Remember the CIA guy Wilson was working with who kept trying to tell this story about a Buddhist holy man? Things would happen, and the old man would say: ”We’ll see”. But every time he tried to go on with the story he would be interrupted.

So finally toward the end of the movie he manages to get to the end of the story and the punchline is also, ”We’ll see”.

Can anybody give me the whole story? I’d be most grateful because I want to tell it to one of my grandchildren.

I guess I have been lucky all my life, never been really in danger. I grew up in Joplin Missouri, never more than a mild breeze of 140 mph or so, did a tour in that tropical vacation spot Viet Nam, with the 1st Inf Div touring company. Took some school in Butte Montana, wonderful winter climate, only minus 50 degrees or so. Last job was in the Arizona desert, working in a open building where on occasion it would get to a balmy 120 degrees.

Saw this poor woman in NYC who had been without power for three days,screaming that they were dying and when was someone going to help them. Maybe next time she might think to save some milk jugs to fill with water and maybe think of some way to keep warm at night, maybe a $19.98 Walmart sleeping bag. Nah, that would require thinking for five minutes.

Now thats Evil

Well I am sure that the mayor and governor lost some sleep that night over her plight.

Having grown up in NY in the 70′s and 80′s, I know these people aren’t crapping in hallways because they don’t have running water.

It’s hard not to notice since Katrina that the media stages a blackout every time there is a natural disaster in a red state. If citizens are helping one another, and chaos is kept to a minimum, the cameras stay away.

Nothin’ like mother nature makin’ you ‘go green’ in one fell swoop, Lefties! Embrace the new world order of greendom! Surely, your carbon footprint is much smaller now? Time for that green tent city you all dream of. *wink-wink*

It is in times of tribulation that real character displays itself. I’ve been involved in three natural disasters, and in every one of them Oklahoma City, Joplin, MO, wide outbreak of tornadoes and in and near Houston, TX, during a hurricane, everyday citizens rose to the occasion without fanfare.

Government was simply overwhelmed and incapable. We didn’t wait around for FEMA or Obama or Bloomberg to save us. We went to work and regained our sense of community.

If there was widespread looting, I never it. All I saw was people lifting a hand and doing without, mostly without complaint. We helped our own. We didn’t feel like we had to protect what remained.

And though it would be unfair to describe this to every neighborhood in a blue state as I am sure Staten Island will rise to the occasion too, if you ask me, what I describe is exactly what separates Red State from Blue State, what separates Conservatives from Liberals.

One more thing.. back in ’98 up here in Quebec we had an ice storm that left a good chunk of the province without electricity for over 30 days in sub-zero temperatures. I worked a ham radio net and helped transport firewood from wherever we could get it to needier people.
There was no shooting or looting.

I resent a lot of you who are making fun of those suffering in NY, NJ and surround area’s! Uncle Joe and Prez 0bama have taken a lot of my hard earned money to keep those folks in a soft and comfy life and it rue’s my day to see my money has did little to stop such a disaster, in one of our heaviest taxed cities no less! I have faith that as soon as power is restored everyone’s remote control will again return the mob to their coach and keep the guns of those demon “Clinger on’s” from murdering so many of the innocent of our inner cities!

here on staten island, i have 2 cousins running around all over collecting and delivering supplies.
people have been showing up on their own to help the THOUSANDS (not a few NYers) who were flooded out.
my church is hosting people from kentucky who came up to volunteer and took deliveries of supplies from other states.
you might not be seeing ‘coming together’ but we the people are. with or without nanny Bloomberg, FEMA, etc. And speaking of FEMA, they only started taking bids for water on FRIDAY, according to breitbart.com. They are already out of water.

Re 61.srdem65, rebuilding after a hurricane: Hurricanes can make land over a vast area of the US. If we never rebuilt in any area ever hit most of the coast would be empty. Flood zones are a different matter. New Orleans was already below sea level and I agree does not make sense. But having grown up in Tampa, Florida, hurricanes are not life ending events for most as long as you are prepared and not stupid.Weather anomolies are just a factor in the survival-of-the-fittest scenario.

Back during the winter of 82-83 I was living in Torrance, CA. We had a lot of rain, and while they took all kinds of measures to handle it, such as running huge pipes down the middle of some streets, it did not seem that bad to me. One night I had to put towels along my bedroom windows because it was raining so hard the water was coming under the window tracks. And on a few trips to work I concluded that Toyota must have made submarines in WWII because my Celica was running practically underwater. But it did not seem that bad to me, compared to typical summer T storms and hurricanes in SC and having a tornado blow away part of the apartment complex in OK.

My Mom called and told me it was terrible out here I lived. I replied that it was not any worse than a typical storm in SC. She assured me it was far worse, just terrible. I disagreed, and I guess she was right that along the shoreline it was. They showed pictures of doors floating in King Harbor, blown off seaside shops by the storm.

The TV news has a way of emphasizing things that people actually on the scene do not appreciate.

A few years ago Hurricane Hugo caused a windstorm one Sunday afternoon in Ohio that caused massive power outages. We were only without electricity for 24 hours but others in my community were without for up to 10 days. Most people managed to cope. Some lost the contents of their refrigerators and freezers, and some stores lost thousands of dollars of spoiled food.I was really impressed with how one discount grocery handled the outage. They had refrigerator trucks on standby that loaded up the perishables and frozen foods and stored it until the power returned. This was their contingency plan that was in place before the outage. Many stoplights were out and it became apparent very soon that the 4-way stop rules learned in driver’s ed had been forgotten. This experience made me think how I would handle a long duration blackout. We are experienced campers with camping equipment, so cooking and lighting would not be a problem. I keep extra nonperishable food on hand, so hunger wouldn’t be an issue although we might get tired of the boring meals. I even thought of how we would handle sewage if the sewage plants and water stopped functioning. I live in a house with a yard where I could cook, build a latrine etc. How would someone in a 10th story apartment building with no functioning elevator manage things like safely cooking on a camping stove or gas grill? Hurricane Hugo was in the early fall, so both keeping cool or keeping warm wasn’t an issue. There were also still stores and gas stations open because the blackout wasn’t . complete. Our community is not dependent on public transportation unlike NYC. I remember that there were stories of neighbors helping each other I don’t remember any riots or looting. I helped haul water to a stable owned by a friend of mine who didn’t have electricity for 10 days and had a well and electric pump. Obviously our experience doesn’t compare to that of NY and NJ where there was loss of life and great damage. I don’t know if we are more self sufficient here in the Midwest or if weathering a long term power outage would be easier because of our environment. My heart goes out to the victims of this storm.

I’ve spent years in emergency management and as soon as the storm was over and we could see the damage, I knew the critical point would be 5-7 days after the storm. People are pretty good for 72 hours and after that, tempers fray and patience shorts out, especially in cities. Expectations of an instant fix slowly gives way to the realization that it will not happen. The fact that election day coincides with the 7th post-storm day and that it has happened in predominantly blue states may make for a true grand slam for Romney.

I’m thinking that famous electoral map showing all those eastern seaboard states as solidly blue is going to suffer a sea change.

People above have riffed on the scene where Frodo and Sam have completed their mission and are contemplating their imminent demise. That may be apropos, but I’d suggest that if Obama wins on Tuesday it’ll be like that scene only they will not have completed their mission, and they’re just sitting there waiting for the hammer to drop, not at all certain what form it will take or when it will happen.

If Romney wins….pretty much the same thing, only it’ll take a little longer. I’m hoping fervently for Romney to win, not, like many, because he will save us. He won’t. But he’ll at least TRY, and that will buy us some more time to prepare for what comes next. I’m not sure what that is…but I’m pretty sure it’ll get very, very ugly and once that happens I’m pretty certain I’ll never see a world again in my lifetime as lovely as that which I see around me now.

At some point in the next 6 months or year, I’ll probably be going into internet silence. I’m going to close as many accounts as possible, finish getting 100% out of debt, convert all money to physical goods, move to all-cash transactions wherever possible and just start stacking supplies deep as I can.

W’s three conjectures were written in the context of what we would do if attacked by Islam. I wonder what W would write in the context of the event where we basically attack ourselves? That would be an essay I would be sure not to miss. I’m reminded of the scene at the end of the first Terminator moving. “What did he say?” “A storm is coming”.

“Remember how those hicks in Oklahoma, North Dakota, western Iowa, etc. behaved after disasters hit their areas/communities?”

Yeah…I grew up and now live in the Red River Valley (a huge area along the border between ND and MN…some of the flattest land on Earth). Floods were and are a common occurrence in the early part of April. In the northern hemisphere when you have a north-flowing river, the headwaters thaw, but there’s still a lot of ice downstream. Ice dams build up and when land is as flat as it is here, overland flooding can happen pretty easily. It’s a real trip to be driving down a highway with what looks like huges lakes on either side of the road. Complete with whitecaps if it’s windy.

We never saw any real money to help us rebuild that I can ever remember. We never expected it. There have been some flood mitigation projects that the Feds and states put in that have helped, but other than that we’re pretty much on our own. We like it that way. Just stay the hell out of our business and we’ll stay out of yours. Come visit us and we’ll be friendly enough…unless you start trying to tell us what to do. If you do that, we might start to get a little…RESENTFUL. If that makes us hicks, then we’re hicks.

“Several months ago I read David McCullough’s book on the Johnstown flood in the late 19th century. As soon as the waters receded, the suviving citizens immediately organized themselves into committees responsible for food, shelter, fuel, search & rescue, burial detail, police, medical staff, communications, etc.”

I haven’t read the above book yet, but I’ll bet one of the reasons why Johnstown citizens were able to organize so quickly was due to the fact that many of them were already members of fraternal and mutual aid societies (Masons, Odd Fellows, ethnic German and Irish organizations, etc.) as well as participating in organizations like volunteer fire companies, militia companies, sports teams, etc. 19th Century Americans were nothing if they weren’t “joiners” and they lived in an age when most everybody in towns knew everybody else and frequently interacted with them. Having read almost every single issue of the 19th Century newspapers in my locale, I’ve been repeatedly struck by this fact.

I was in basic navigation school in NAS Corpus Christi when Hurricane Celia hit our area in 1970. We all took the opportunity to fly a training mission up to Tinker AFB to save the airplanes from the storm. Later that day/night our plane commander was on the phone to his wife in base housing during the height of the storm. She was panicked of course and when the wind caught the overhang of the poorly built and designed roofs, he could hear the roof get pulled off of his house and the horrible screams of his wife, just before the line went dead.

Early the next day we flew a straight flight back to Corpus Christi and landed on the runway notwithstanding that the runway was still closed. I think he must have gotten in trouble for that because he violated orders in returning so soon, but I never heard. Turns out, his wife and his family were OK.

My BOQ room was soaked – strange though, because none of the big bay windows were broken. Apparently the force of the wind blasted water through the door seams. My Volkswagen was also sandblasted by the pebbles in the parking lot and all the windows were out. When I opened the door, water poured out on my flight boots. The car got fixed/repainted because I had insurance (we didn’t worry about mold or mildew back then) and I used a backpacking mattress to sleep on the balcony because it was stifling hot and humid in the room at night. I remember that being inconvenient but not a big deal. During the day, we Ensigns and Lt(jg)s were assigned to lead working parties of enlisted guys to begin the pickup of all the debris (mostly from destroyed housing units) in the 95 degree heat.

I remember those days like they were yesterday and although I really lost very little of my personal possessions, I remember the general feeling as one of incredible depression and melancholy. Much of that feeling seemed to come from the smallness that is Man – that Mother Nature can simply have her way with us whenever she chooses and it doesn’t matter what power you have to array against her onslaught – you’re toast. The other part of that feeling was that in picking up a piece here and a piece there and throwing it into a dump truck, you are simply dwarfed by the immensity of the destruction. And then you think of all the people who may have lost loved ones – not just property – and you have to dig deep into feeling how incredibly devastating this “storm” was for many, many folk. people in New York and New Jersey are all being overwhelmed by that feeling today.

If you don’t have the belief in a higher power and faith in God’s intent and love, you can imagine those without faith to be completely lost in what anyone can call the “senselessness” of it all.

They ordered us back to classes as soon as power was provided and we got to go back into our air conditioned spaces to learn how to navigate our T-29s on the next cross country. I was relieved, but I remember feeling slightly guilty at being herded back into class because we were ordered to leave the heavy lifting to all the folks we had worked with for a couple of days. The work was hard, thankless and depressing. I think I was feeling guilty because I was relieved of a truly uncomfortable and depressing task. I also felt like a transient – not really part of the base – and yet that sense of hopelessness still hung in the air.

We were harassed by the heat, and felt it was intolerable. But to me, the heat was a piece of cake compared to the cold that the NY and NJ folks have to put up with.

Sometime back I went to see Denzel Washington’s The Book of Eli. In the beginning Denzel is out hunting for food and lip balm (AKA cat fat) and he draws a bead on a lonesome furless cat searching human bodies for food. Swooshh – Denzel scores on the cat.

Behind me, a woman said aloud, “Oh…not the kitty.”

My companion kept me from turning around, the statement was so out of touch in a post-apocalyptic movie. I mumbled, “A man’s gotta eat don’t he?” just loud enough for her to hear.

Quiet.

If you’re going to that kind of movie, the least you can do is get into the reality of what the world would be like. Let it soak in, I say, and giddy up – L.E.A.R.N. That’s probably just the way it will be.

I think I saw that woman on TV today, cussing out the dwarf that is the Commissar of New York City.

W’s three conjectures were written in the context of what we would do if attacked by Islam. I wonder what W would write in the context of the event where we basically attack ourselves?

I am intrigued by the concept of applying the Three Conjectures domestically. I’ll not even pretend to be able to do it justice, but there are a couple of thoughts that come to mind.

In the battle between ourselves and TWANLOC, there is no truce or co-existence possible. The Enemy will not allow such. They will keep pushing, keep attacking, and they have for decades openly considered us to be more of an antagonist than any foreign power that has threatened us during the last couple of generations.

If they get the chance, and surely if Obama is not removed Tuesday, they will continue to push until they reach a point that is intolerable. And at that point, the assumed superiority of Leftists will meet a real world test. And regardless of how the battle will ebb and flow once joined; there will be no compromise and one side or the other will fall.

If Obama is removed, and especially of Romney holds to his pledge to roll back at least Obamacare and other impositions of the current regime; the Enemy will not take it well. If they lose the levers of power, they may well resort to what they have done in the past. Keep in mind that the government of the Confederate States of America was made up of what were formerly Democrat officials of the US government. Revolt, secession, or guerrilla warfare is in their nature. And battle will be joined again with terminal results for one side or the other.

One of my favorite historical personages is James Graham; 5th Earl and 1st Marquis Montrose. He was one of the greatest generals of his time and was known as “the Great Montrose”. He carried a personal banner in his last campaign, a mountain lion leaping from one crag to another. The motto: Nil Medium, “No Middle Ground”. It may take a different number of Conjectures for Wretchard to lay out domestic hypotheses for our poor country, but we do not have any middle ground possible.

We know catastrophe is guaranteed – but we have no certainty about what it will be – save that ultimate catastrophe – our personal end-of-the-world at our death.. which might have been delayed or prevented had we not slowed-down (regulated) medical (really all) progress (granted, others will argue that slowing down / regulating has actually extended my life more than unencumbered technical progress directed by unencumbered (by regulation) price signals reflecting the masses first-democratic right of voting with our wallets).

For any given catastrophe, history shows that those that are most wealthy, that have the most (motive) power and energy under their, their family and/or their nearby neighbors’ personal control not only survive, but suffer least (vice those waiting for drowned-out yellow schoolbuses). Therefore any regulation beyond some minimum crafted to insure personal consequences (not corporate) for repeated stupidity always hurts the least of us most. In this case (power) perhaps it’s NIMBY – there’s every reason for neighborhoods of 1000-10000 homes to have their own power and other services, perhaps attached to a grid, but not dependent on it. But, even though we could have very clean power locally, including coal, we don’t – because it’s not just the utilities and the rate payers at the table anymore, it’s all the special interests. And the utilities love it because it lets them just continue to raise their rates without doing what they’d normally do – raise rates justified by growth, more capacity for safety’s sake, selling more energy at cheaper prices, etc. (remember when power companies used to give away light bulbs and fix heaters, stoves?). Instead we (well, really special interests) fooled ourselves that conservation was the same as more, cheaper, better production. So now we pay. And pay. And sometimes pay with our lives. Remember the >15,000 deaths of the elderly in France during an August heatwave? All because the standard of living for the poor (and power infrastructure) there is lower than the U.S. where a window airconditioner is a $75 impulse buy here – vice the regulated, protected-market $250 in France.

And why is it is that public transportation in the affected areas was the first, not last, to shutdown?? So much for “neither rain nor snow, nor..” Again, the least of us are always hurt the most when we leave services to the government – though the degree of this suffering is only visible in extremis.

Reminds me that the Left loves to break up big businesses. You’d think that big cities would be marvelous demonstrations of Leftist’s efficiencies – low cost delivery of the best services because of scale. They clearly are not, the opposite could not be more true. Perhaps we need to break up big cities with the same zeal the Left (and communists) go after any big voluntary organizations (which is part of the collectivist’s religion – “thou shalt have no gods before us”). Call it “mandatory ex-urbanization” – and/or require that no local unit of government be larger than, say, 150,000 (the size of the average U.S. state thru the first quarter of the 1800s). Then citizens can vote with their feet (in addition to their pocketbook), and competition between these units of government for residents will settle all these (social and not) issues (“no soda for you, and you can’t move far enough to escape my dicta..”). Where those who think it’s a great idea will find a place to live with like-minded souls, as well as those who don’t.

Don’t forget the VISA cards given to Katrina survivors. Remember what some were used for? I hver not been in such a chaotic situation but I remember some town in the midwest which was wiped out by a tornado. There were deaths also. Of course the climate and the situation were different but those people weren’t expecting everyone to take care of them. I don’t know how much FEMA can be expected to do. Surely they can get plenty of meals-ready-to eat from some armed forces supplier. They can probasbly get tents, cots, blankets and some soap from another supplier. What to do about gas, I don’t know.
But the lady who lost the home she had lived in for many hears will not be content with that. I wouldn’t be happy either. I don’t know how I would feel but I don’t think I would expect FEMA to cure all the ills.